New $45M Teaching Center Gets Green Light

By Camelia Bulea, Associate Editor The University of Texas System Board of Regents authorized the building of a $45 million academic learning and teaching center at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio. In an official statement, Kenneth Kalkwarf, D.D.S., M.S., president ad interim of the Health Science Center, said the necessary funding would come [...]

The University of Texas System Board of Regents authorized the building of a $45 million academic learning and teaching center at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio. In an official statement, Kenneth Kalkwarf, D.D.S., M.S., president ad interim of the Health Science Center, said the necessary funding would come from permanent university fund bond proceeds.

The 125,000-square-foot center will include a state-of-the-art gross anatomy teaching facility that is needed to train medical, dental, nursing and health profession students. It will also help relieve the Health Science Center’s nearly half-million-square-foot space deficit by providing additional classroom space and lecture halls.

The Board of Regents also approved design plans for the Center for Oral Health Care at the MARC project, a dental school clinical building that will require $95 million to construct. The 198,000-square-foot building will be constructed right next to the MARC, the flagship patient care facility of UT Medicine San Antonio, according to the news release.

Plans call for approximately 172,000 gross square feet on four levels and a 450-car parking garage. The building will be constructed using cost-effective methods, similar to the MARC and other medical structures. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2014.

The San Antonio Dental School ranks among the top dental schools nationwide, according to the dental education blog Top Ten Nation.

In other news, San Antonio Lighthouse for the Blind officials began construction on a new 60,000-square-foot multi-purpose facility on the city’s South Side, according to the San Antonio Business Journal. Built on Eads Street, just around the corner from the Lighthouse’s existing 60,000-square-foot facility on Roosevelt, the new facility will support about 100 new jobs for people who are blind. The facility is expected to be completed by the fall of 2013.